History and Contributions of the Woods Hole Fisheries Laboratory

The genesis and the early history of the Woods Hole Laboratory (WHL),
to a lesser extent the Marine Biological Laboratoray (MBL), and to some
degree the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOl), were
elegantly covered by Paul S. Galtsoff (1962) in his BCF Circular "The
Story of the Bureau of Commercial Fisheries Biological Laboratory,
Woods Hole, Massachusetts." It covers the period from the beginning in
1871 to 1958. Galtsoff's more than 35-year career in the fishery
service was spent almost entirely in Woods Hole. I will only briefly
touch on that portion of the Laboratory's history covered by Galtsoff.

Woods Hole, as a center of marine science, was conceived and
implemented largely by one man, Spencer Fullerton Baird, at that time
Assistant Secretary of the Smithsonian and who was also instrumental in
the establishment of the National Museum and Permanent Secretary of the
newly established American Association for the Advancement of Science.
He was appointed by President Ulysses S. Grant in 1871 as the first
U.S. Commissioner of Fisheries. Fisheries research began here as early
as 1871, but a permanent station did not exist until 1885.

In the first years, work was carried out by a number of eminent
scientists brought to Woods Hole by Baird. Included in the list were
such notables as Addison E. Verrill, Louis Agassiz, Theodore Gill, and
George Brown Goode. The studies of these gentlemen took place often in
an environment that prevails to this day in the Marine Biological
Laboratory. It took place during the summer, the investigator using
whatever facilities were available to carry out his research. The
permanent buildings ultimately came about, in part, because three
institutions, Johns Hopkins, Princeton, and Williams College, pledged
funds to assist in the purchase of land. Many others, including local
citizens, also contributed property and funds. Money was also provided
by Alexander Agassiz.

Baird noted in 1885 that "The colleges in question and Mr. Agassiz
made their contributions with the understanding that, as far as
possible, they were each allowed to send one specialist to the station
for the purpose of carrying on scientific research." You will recognize
that this was, in fact, the origin of the protocol that led to the
ultimate establishment of the Marine Biological Laboratory in 1888.
For all practical purposes, this agreement stands to this day, although
in recent years the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) has
assisted in the funding of the MBL library instead of providing space
to investigators.

In the beginning, the Woods Hole Laboratory was an adjunct of the
Smithsonian Institution. The Fish Commission itself became an
independent agency in 1888, and it was transferred to the new
Department of Commerce and Labor in 1903. Later, in 1939-40, the Bureau
of Fisheries was joined with the Biological Survey and this new unit
then made part of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in the Department
of Interior. In 1956, the Fish and Wildlife Service was reorganized
and the Bureau of Commercial Fisheries was formed. In 1970, the
Bureau of Commercial Fisheries became the National Marine Fisheries
Service as part of the newly formed National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Agency, settling again in the Department of Commerce. This record
suggests, of course, that there may be another change within a few
years.

The Laboratory's first half-century was filled with the enchantment of
discovery. The researchers involved were explorers in a new world,
both from the biological and physical point of view. Nonetheless,
Baird, in his assessment of the problems faced by the fishery of
southern New England at the very beginning, would not be in a strange
environment were he to address his colleagues today. Baird (1873)
stated in the first report of the Commissioner of Fish and Fisheries
for 1871 that the causes of the problems encountered might include:

1) Decrease or disappearance of the food of commercial fishes,
2) migration of fishes to other localities,
3) epidemic diseases and
"peculiar atmospheric agencies such as heat, cold, etc.",
4) destruction by other fishes,
5) man's activities resulting in the pollution of water, in
overfishing, and the use of improper apparatus. With a few changes in
words and emphasis, that statement is probably as valid today as it was
then.

The initial era of exploration and discovery was brought to its
natural end in the 1920's by Henry Bigelow of Harvard University. He,
with his colleagues and students, conducted extensive research on the
fishes, physical oceanography, and plankton in the ocean off New England. Bigelow, of course, went on to become the first Director of the
Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. Some of the excitement of those
days is contained within the following paragraph from "The Plankton
of the Offshore Waters of the Gulf of Maine" by Bigelow (1926)
concerning a cruise made in the summer of 1912:

"If one approaches the Gulf of Maine de novo, one might naturally
expect the plankton of its central portion to be so largely recruited
from the coastal zone that neritic elements would loom large there
also, judging from the forrn length and complexity of the shore line
with the abundant and varied bottom fauna which it supports; from the
confinement of the gulf by the extensive and shallow offshore banks
on the ocean side; from the fact that the tides are strong enough in
places to stir the water thoroughly. Our first summer's cruise (in
1912) was enough to show that this is not the case, but that the
pelagic communities of the gulf a few miles out to sea are
predominantly oceanic, except over the offshore banks."

The second era was one of consolidation based largely on detailed
studies of individual species of commercial significance. Some of the
scientists involved include O. E. Sette, mackerel; R. A. Nesbit and W.
C. Neville, weakfish, scup, and summer flounder; and W. Royce,
yellowtail flounder. Never to be forgotten of course, Paul S. Galtsoff,
well-known oyster expert, worked here from the early 1920's until his
retirement from full-time service in 1957.

There was a growing awareness after World War II that the world was
getting smaller. Pressure on fisheries was no longer local, but
increasingly international in scope. The Canadians, more than anyone
else, were well aware of this; some of their fishing banks had been the
object of exploitation by many countries, perhaps even before Columbus discovered America and certainly immediately thereafter (de Loture,
1957). Out of this concern, ICNAF, the International Commission for the
Northwest Atlantic Fisheries, was born. The convention was ratified in
l95Q and for about 10 years, ICNAF had significance to us only in
connection with our fishery interactions with Canada. For a long time,
the Commission was informally referred to as the "haddock" com-
mission because the management of quickly and easily. haddock was of
prime interest to the United States. More about ICNAF later.

In 1951, Herbert W. Graham was appointed Director of the Woods Hole
Laboratory (Galtsoff, 1962). It fell on his shoulders to develop new
programs for the Laboratory in light of the new and growing
international responsibilities, and the increased interest our
country had in marine fisheries as expressed in the
Saltonstall-Kennedy (S-K) bill. A new phase had begun which for lack of
a better term, may be calied the "ecological" era. Lionel Walford, at
the time the Director of Fisheries Research in Washington, D.C., fully
supported the approach.

It should be noted that this era had been clearly signaled by a
gentleman who had connections both with the Fisheries Service and
Harvard University,. and as well, WHOI, George L. Clarke, His paper on
"The Dynamics of a Marine Community" (Clarke, 1946), provided our initial
master plan. As a consequence of S-K funding, a new vessel, the
Albatross IV, was acquired, the original buildings that had been
badly damaged by several hurricanes were replaced, and the programs
began to change from those with a single-species orientation to one of
programs with a broader ecological orientation.

One particular development at this time deserves mention. As the
single species programs were consolidated, regular spring and fall
groundfish surveys were implemented. The survey continues to this day
providing without doubt one of the finest long-trem biological
databases in existence. The last 25 years have seen radical changes in
a great many aspects of life, more changes, in most cases, than had
occurred in the preceding 75 years.

In the area of technological change:
1) We still go to sea in ships, but now, under the sea as well.

2) We may now examine the bottom and the intervening water column with
comparative ease--using man himself, undersea habitats, submarines,
television, and other exotic instruments.

4) We can navigate our vessels withpinpoint precision.

5) Satellites can now map sea surface temperatures over wide areas
almost instantaneously and detect even relatively minor undulations in
the sea floor thousands of feet beneath the surface.

In the area of institutional change:

1) The NMFS predecessor, the BCF moved from its home in the Department
of Interior to NOAA, thus returning to the Department of Commerce.

2) The centuries-old concept of freedom of the high seas passed from
the scene to be replaced by a 200-mile economic zone, then the
exclusive economic zone (EEZ), and the partitioning of the Gulf of
Maine on this the U.S. northeast coast. Still coming are further

3) International fishery commissions grew in size and responsibility at
a great rate and in some instances have disappeared from the scene
equally rapidly.

4) Interstate commissions, which once had a great influence on our
priorities, no longer play a significant role in our lives. Many of
their activities have since been taken over by the Regional Fishery
Management Councils set up under the Magnuson Fishery Conservation and
Management Act (MFCMA).

During the 1960's, concern for understanding the oceans was high on
our nattional agenda; Compared with that time of intense and
continuous interest, our present national concern may be described as
being one of random moments of high interest as the consequence of
a crisis, for example oil spills or sewage sludge washing up on the
beaches of Long Island, between which events nobody really seems to be
paying much attention.

The change in venue of the Woods Hole Laboratory in the 1970's was significant and it tended to blur its image as a particular institution at
a particular place. It is now the headquarters for all of the NMFS
research for the northeastern sector of the country, carried out by
satellite laboratories in many different states.

The changes that have taken place in the scientific arena, of greatest
interest to most of us, are the least easy to describe. They are
perhaps best illustrated by differences in the schooling of those here
in the earlier period and those hired since. Electrons, for one
example, no longer circle the nucleus of an atom like moons around the
earth--they may or may not exist in this place or that, earlier, now,
or in the future. The simply conceived gene of my generation has been
replaced by a coded filament conceptually similar to the instructions
on a piece of computer tape promoting a series of actions and
transformations undreamed of just a few decades ago. The earlier
professional staff was dominated by individuals with bachelor and
master degrees, and often in the area of wildlife management. Now the
majority have their doctorates in a wide variety of fields including
economics, statistical theory, genetics, parasitology, ecology, and so
on.

Galtsoff's 1962 history of the Laboratory, brings us to the point
where substantial scientific reorganization of the program structure
began to take place. At that time, virtually every major fishery was
represented by its own research project. Each project often had an office and personnel in a particular port dominated by that fishery. The
sea scallop project had an office in New Bedford, redfish had an of
fice in Gloucester, and so on. Each office took care of the needs of
other projects as well, of course, in the time available. The change
took place under the direction of Herbert W. Graham in the early 1960's
and, in fact, occurred very quickly despite the fact that such a
structural change was a radical departure from past tradition. It was a
form of programmatic restructuring that did not take place quickly,
if at all, in some of the other laboratories around the country. It
set the stage for additional integration and coordination between
programs in the other laboratories in the Northeast when the Northeast
Fisheries Center was created.

The Research Center concept, which included a new role for the Woods
Hole Laboratory, was implemented in two stages. Initially, in 1970-71,
it was decided to remove the research laboratories from the purview
of the Regional Directors, who had a great many other things to do, and
to place them under a Research Center Director reporting directly to
the NMFS Washington, D.C., office. Subsequently, in 1975, the marine
sportfish laboratories were also placed within the Center structure. It
is a credit to those who made that decision that they recognized that
one cannot divide a fish species along bureaucratic lines. Further,
while it was already apparent 30 years ago that angling was a growing
and important recreational activity in the Northeast, it is now clearly
recognized as a dominant activity, and at least, from the
sociological point of view, as important as commercial fishing.

The Center concept, incidentally, grew out of a period of severe
financial difficulty, in 1969-70, for what was then the Bureau of
Commercial Fisheries. An opportunity presented itself at that time to
take advantage of the growing appreciation of the need for having a
"critical mass" and interdisciplinary teamwork to deal with marine
ecological problems relevant to fishery management. In addition,
there was finally a willingness to accept the fact that there were real
regional differences in the biological arena, despite the fact that
everyone thought that regions were only administrative. It should be
noted in passing that the term "ecology" was still considered an
arcane word in Washington, D.C., in the 1960's, although those in
charge did appreciate the significance of ecological research in the
marine environment insofar as fisheries problems were concerned.

In the late 1960's, at the time when the New England area was in a
state of shock from the onslaught of the foreign fisheries, the
Laboratory began an initiative that resulted in the establishment of
the Polish Zooplankton Sorting Center in Szczecin, Poland. We were
overwhelmed by the number and complexity of the samples required
and the work involved in sorting and cataloging them.

The establishment of this institution solved our problems nicely and,
of course, enabled the Polish Government to carry its load of fisheries
research responsibility in the area. As a result, the Laboratory now
has one of the better long-term data bases for zooplankton and
ichthyoplankton. The Sorting Center still exists; it is at present
planning an expansion since it now also serves the other three
fisheries Centers.

The "ecosystem" approach to fisheries management was born in the
Woods Hole Laboratory in the late 1960's and was implemented in the
early lg70's when the fish biomass of the region reached historically
low levels. Biomass management was an earthshaking proposition both
to the international community, and to American administrators.
Implemented in 1973, the biomass management concept was succeeding at
the time that the United States extended its jurisdiction over marine
fisheries. It was successful for a number of reasons, including: 1)
The amount and quality of the joint research carried out with foreign
countries, 2) the credibility of the groundfish survey data base, 3)
the well turned out and voluminous analyses of the population
assessment experts of the Laboratory, and 4) the general appreciation
of basics of ecological science that was finally beginning to permeate
international resource management decision makers.

Those were particularly interesting days, for just one reason, simply
because success in ICNAF delayed the extension of jurisdiction by the
United States. A biomass management system has not been invoked since,
although the New England Fisheries Management Council is developing a
groundfish management plan covering several of the more important
groundfish species. Over the years, the Laboratory has tried very hard
to put man into the ecosystem as an integral dynamic factor. Bioomass
management was the beginning of this effort, but there is still a very
long way to go.

The ICNAF days, in particular the period from 1963 when foreign
exploitation began to appear formidable, until 1977, were extremely
busy times. You will recall that our national policy, then, was still
that of "freedom of the high seas." It was necessary to do many other
things in addition to what one would normally regard as research. The
United States, and particularly the Woods Hole Laboratory, had the
responsibility, not only for the bulk of the research on the stocks off
our shores, but also for maintaining a high degree of credibility in
its studies and reports, and the manner in which we carried out our
work. It was our country's position that other nations carry their
share of the research, and that, as much as possible, this research be
done jointly.

During this period, Laboratory and Center personnel took part in more
than 200 ocean-going joint research projects (each project had an
average duration of 2 weeks), on some 40 different vessels from eight
different nations. At one time, in 1976, we had two Soviet, one Polish,
one West German and a French research vessel in port at the same time.
At that time, there were also two NMFS, NOAA vessels stationed in Woods
Hole, the Albatross IV and Delaware II. We filled the WHOI docks as
well as our own. Some of the other countries with whom the WHL has been
involved include East Germany, Japan, Spain, and Canada. All told,
some 60 worker-years of WHL personnel time were spent at sea on these
vessels.

Another joint project initiated by the Laboratory in l975, was the
Helgoland undersea habitat project carried out in the Gulf of Maine to
study the spawning behavior of Atlantic herring. The habitat belonged to
West Germany. The transportation logistics were handled by the Polish
Government. Scientists from these countries, the United States, Canada,
and the Soviet Union also took part in the study. A great deal was
learned from this experiment about the usefulness and vulnerability of
undersea habitats, as well as about sea herring behavior and spawning.

The ICNAF days were characterized by never-ending intensive study and
hard work. There is no way one can describe this time and this effort
beyond the fact that the volume of papers and reports prepared, mostly
gray literature of course, fill many shelves. The challenge was so
great, and so stimulating, that we never had a serious case of burnout. The nights were long, sometimes very long, the frustrations great,
but the successes sweet.

Following the extension of jurisdiction and the establishment of the
Regional Fishery Management Councils, in 1976, it was relatively
easy, given the baptismal fire of the ICNAF days, to deal with the
needs and attitudes of the new managers. These were very different
days, however. It is one thing to be dealing with separate cultures,
with actions and words filtered through the mesh of diplomatic
delicacy, quite another to be dealing brother to brother with sibling
rivalry dominating the scene. It would appear on the surface that much
of what was learned in ICNAF by decision makers seems to have been
forgotten, and that in some ways we are back to ground zero.

The U.S.-Canada boundary argument, an issue brought to the fore by
extended jurisdiction, occupied a great deal of the Laboratory/Center
attention in the last 4 years. An earlier negotiated agreement between
the United States and Canada failed to get U.S. Senate approval, and
was submitted to the World Court in The Hague for settlement. The
principal burden for the preparation of the material on the environment
and the provision of vast amounts of fishery and economic data was
placed on the Woods Hole Laboratory. These were particularly trying
times since the outcome was pretty well known even before we took the
case to the World Court, and it was hard to put so much effort into
what appeared to be a no-win situation. In addition, it was
apparent that much of this work also would never get beyond the gray
literature stage.

Our research today is properly characterized as ecological in tone,
but the discipline "ecology" is merely the tool. Living resource
ecosystems will inevitably be modified to man's ends in many
different ways, and natural ecosystems, per se, will not be the
entities conserved or managed in the long run. In point of fact, it is
doubtful that we have been dealing with natural ecosystems for many
years now. We are entering a period of redefinition of terms; for example, ecology is not synonymous with conservation, and conservation
may soon be found to be synonymous with management.

Conservation and management both stem from value judgements made by
society, not science. Much of the present attempt to deal with such
terms, and the approaches traditionally associated with them, has to do
with the realization that man's activities, and needs, and
population, have finally resulted in a situation where preservation of
what once was, is no longer possible or feasible. Population pressure
aside, new value judgements and new definitions of a desirable quality
of life are mandatory.

While, on the surface, the basic fishery research priorities haven't
changed all that much, the approach certainly has. It is now highly
interactive and ecological rather than dominated by the fire-fighting,
specific project approach characteristic of the NMFS or BCF and the
Woods Hole Laboratory, in the earlier days. It is finally well
understood that no species lives in a vacuum, and that its existence is
dependent upon a biotic and abiotic amalgam that will continue to be
difficult to deal with for some time to come. The biological system
does not lend itself readily to the relatively simple, if elegant,
modeling approaches characteristic of the physical sciences. In this
regard, there has been considerable maturation within the ecological
community. Model we must, regardless of the length, variability, and
convolutions in time and space of the biological causal linkage chain.
To this end, the Laboratory, and the consortium of laboratories of
which it is headquarters, will continue to give a high priority to the
maintainence of longterm data bases so necessary for the modeling
approaches that are just now beginning to bear fruit.

Whatever happens, man will be desirous of maximizing returns, given the
energy inputs, and this, of course, is one of the main themes of
ecological research.

Just as the basic research priorities have not changed, the
sociopolitical environment hasn't changed very much either, if at all.
It should be noted that this is not a characteristic of the immediate
fisheries constituency, but characteristic of human beings anywhere, in
whatever country. Management of resources, perhaps more so the
renewable resources, is a contentious process at best. There never is
enough data, that is, enough data to make a decision in-escapable. As
resources diminish, the demand for more data and information will
continue to grow, both because there isn't enough fish to go around,
and each decision, one way or another, threatens to change somebody's
life style. Dealing with the need for more data and information will
continue as a Laboratory priority as far into the future as I can see,
or until the living marine resources are of no further value to our
society.

With respect to the comment about diminishing resources, it has only
been very recently that people have really begun to put aside the
long-held, longcherished notion that the ocean is filled with fish.
Of course it isn't, at least in the sense of those species desired by
and found useful to man, and, economically available in the
technological sense.

As yet, there is no clean delineation between the economic and
ecological disciplines, in fisheries at least. In ecosystem terms,
man is not a prudent predator. His intervention is disjunct, and the
feedback controls that he responds to are in good part independent of
the natural resource ecosystem. It has been said often enough that the
real problem is not fisheries management or fisheries research, but
the management of man. Putting man into the ecosystem will certainly
require further work in the near future and has, in fact, become a
principal programmatic theme within the Laboratory.

The heavy logistic requirements for maintaining certain data bases is
going to decrease perhaps more quickly than many people think. As the
academically oriented institutions come to grips with the
fundamentals of continental shelf processes, especially in physical
oceanographic disciplines, remote sensors, be they automated buoys or
satellites or aircraft, will increasingly replace vessels. It will
be a long time, however, before the need for vessels to carry out
biological sampling and process oriented studies will cease to be
necessary. This particular instant in time is especially critical. It
seems that we are still all too ready at the moment to discount the
future for immediate gain, and vessels are expensive to operate.

There is no reason to believe that Baird, in selecting Woods Hole,
appreciated (in the first instance) that he was giving birth to other
institutions as well. The manner in which he stimulated research,
almost immediately, set the stage for an academic counterpart, the
Marine Biological Laboratory. The Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
came along very much later, in 1931. It grew out of a growing national
appreciation for the ocean and its promise, a recognition that came
about to a considerable extent because of the results of the work of
H. B. Bigelow, which had been carried out, in part, on behalf of the
Bureau of Fisheries.

The MBL and the Bureau of Fisheries were closely linked in interests
and in the use of facilities for a very long period of time. The
relationship might very well be described as incestuous.
(Incidentally, a good friend of both institutions and a most
distinguished biologist and colleague who has lived through almost
the entire period we are talking about, Horace Stunkard, is with us
tonight. He will be celebrating his 96th birthday next Friday, when we
celebrate our hundredth birthday.)

We have grown apart in recent years as the MBL has moved more in the
direction of squid axons and intracellular processes. The role that
the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution established for itself early
on, that of an organization more interested in blue water and distant
seas than the dynamics of the local continental shelf, also led to a
separation of ways. Thus, it is that the three institutions now have
unique roles and interests, although this is very hard for many people
to understand. I will never forget the stunned look on the face of a
former MBL Director, many years ago, when a certain concerned
congressman asked him what his institution was doing about the
haddock problem; or that our first NOAA Administrator, Bob White,
insisted on calling me through the WHOI switchboard.

One wonders if these roles will continue to remain so different, so
unique. I suspect so. They are valid, and responsive to the needs of
today. However, as time goes on and as we push the limits of
exploitation ever more severely, we will all be working very hard,
together, but within these different roles, to put humans into the
ecosystem in an acceptable manner. That will require the good
services of everyone, and at least thematically, Spencer Baird may,
very well, once again have a single institution in Woods Hole. What a
legacy that is! Just as society is at a crossroads, so is the
Laboratory.

More than ever before it is imperative that future options be
preserved.

More than ever before the nation needs healthy, mission-oriented marine
research arms and healthy, process- oriented marine research arms. To
the extent that this need is shared by the nation at large, the
Fisheries Laboratory in Woods Hole has at least another hundred years
of work before it, as does the entire scientific community in Woods
Hole.

Epilogue: It should be noted, although it must be very obvious, that we
are really celebrating two things today--first the 10th birthday of
the Woods Hole Laboratory and second, that critical man at a critical
time, Spencer F. Baird.

Taken from a lecture given
at the Fisheries Centennial Celebration (1985)
by Robert L. Edwards